Diary of a Grammatical Misfit

For the last two days there have been butterflies squatting in my stomach. It doesn’t seem right to describe a butterfly as squatting - it would be far more elegant to say they are residing in my stomach. But they are habiting without permission and so are therefore squatters.

Every time I think they’ve gone away, they come back. They probably just nip down to the pub for a quick drink or two because whenever they reappear they bring more friends with them. Sociable little blighters. I imagine the post-pub parties going on in my stomach. They’re probably lounging on a makeshift sofa constructed of the toast I had this morning and swigging cans of nectar. There’s probably one telling amusing anecdotes about the stomachs of other people he has tormented.

There’s definitely two or more who are continually arguing. I know this because I can feel them churning the far left corner of my stomach. They’re bashing around and stamping their tiny little feet in a very angry fashion.

There’s probably one responsible butterfly who’s quite annoyed by the habits of her fellow squatters and is trying to persuade them all to calm down. There’s always one of them at parties. This one’s not having much luck although she may have persuaded them to keep their feet off the sofa, I wouldn’t know.

Hopefully they will be out sometime today. Like every other person who has suffered the butterfly squatters, I will wait and see what state they leave me in when they depart.

Although I have not been blogging much (as mentioned yesterday) I have not yet devoted all my spare time to the job-hunt. March is stomping on by (definitely more like a lion now than it was when it arrived) and so far I have got around to the following:

• One modern art/design fair named “Form London”. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life so far when an earnest young woman tried to persuade me that spending 6 grand on a painting was “a worthwhile investment”. I mean, seriously, there should be training for people so that they can tell that a person whose entire outfit (inc. coat and bag) cost less than £150, does not have thousands to invest in art. 
• One aerial view of London courtesy of the London Eye. Oooooh, aaaaah. Not been up before. Was very pretty on sunny spring time day. Next time I want to go at dusk.
• Two comedians (Jimmy Carr and Josie Long). Both very funny and very witty but in entirely different ways. I probably laughed slightly more at Jimmy Carr but am pretty sure Josie Long has more potential to make me laugh ‘til I’m sick one day.
• One museum, the Tate Modern. Another thing I’m surprised I haven’t been to before. Spent much time standing at the bottom of the slides and a goodly while clapping on command as some kind of mass experiment. Hmmmm.
• Only one play (gasp), The 39 Steps, which makes up for its solitude by being the most amusing play I’ve ever seen. Maybe. Well maybe not, it depends really. But it is very very funny. Fantastically farcical in fact.
• One whole trip to the cinema (double gasp) to see Factory Girl which I thought was pretty good although I still haven’t forgiven the cinema generally and have not been converted back to regular attendance. This time was cool though since we had free tickets to splurge and I doubt I would’ve got around to seeing it on DVD.
• Two dancey things – one night of the flamenco festival at Sadler’s Wells which was spectacular and renewed my desire to take up flamenco dancing. (The desire has yet to be fulfilled and probably never will be). The other was a dress rehearsal of the Royal Ballet’s Onegin which was dramatic and beautiful. I’d love to see ballet at the Royal Opera House more often but unfortunately I do not have a property to provide a second mortgage to pay for it.
• One night with dead people. Also known as Derek Acorah’s ‘live’ show. Was interesting but scarily over-hyped, complete with booming music and an American voice-over insisting we “give it up for the world’s best spirit medium Derrrrrrrrrrrreekkkkk ACK – OR – RAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Derek kindly warned the audience before we left that we were likely to be followed home by spirits who didn’t have a chance to communicate with us and to watch out for strange noises and eerie presences. As an exercise in mass paranoia inducement, it was impressive! Sadly though, all I have experienced since the show is the echoing sounds of american style voice-overs ringing around my head and I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with any deceased relatives…

…I’m gonna catch a good one. (I hope so, I hope so!!)

The last couple of weeks my blogging has been decidedly spasmodic. This is largely because my non-work computer time has been spent on job hunt related tasks. I have lost count of the number of times I have ‘tweaked’ my CV (although it remains school-girlishly honest, I could never risk lying on my CV - I’m a terrible liar and any questions would catch me out immediately!).

I have also ‘researched’ (i.e. memorised the websites of) a couple of companies that have been nice enough to ask me for interview.

What did people do in preparation for job interviews before the internet I wonder? I must put that in my list of ‘things to ask old people before they forget’.

Anyway, it’s been quite time-consuming but I’m still a long way from actually getting a new job. I’m already worn out though - I hope I don’t run out of energy before I find one!

…I’m not afraid…Are you?…Not me (much)!

Bubble wrap

The T mobile voice mail service

Tables (individually, not as a whole, I am not a tablist)

Printing people (as in the people who print, not the creating images of / on humans)

Middle aged women talking incessantly on train and sounding scarily like a comedy

sketch saying “You’ll never guess what…….” “OOOOOOH no! Really? Well I never!”

The buzzer on our intercom system

The concept of the diagonal

Time Magazine

Penguins

Weather

This list is designed to look like a gun in order to shoot all needlessly annoying things for ever more. However I have not been annoyed by enough things in the last week to create a trigger so it is an annoyingly impotent gun.

So list is now:

Bubble wrap

The T mobile voice mail service

Tables (individually not as a whole, I am not a tablist)

Printing people (as in the people who print, not the creating images of / on humans)

Middle aged women talking incessantly on train and sounding scarily like a comedy

sketch saying “You’ll never guess what…….” “OOOOOOH no! Really? Well I never!”

The buzzer on our intercom system

The concept of the diagonal

Time Magazine

Penguins

Weather

Guns made of words that are incapable of firing

Didn’t see the last one coming when I woke up this morning.

I don’t think this is common, if it is, I’d love to know, but for me, being ill has the same visual effects as visiting a health spa. My mum pointed this out to me when I was little and it’s still true - I look good when sick.

Somehow the paleness of infection smoothes out my complexion while the feverish flush of my cheeks looks much better than my pathetic attempts at using blusher. Illness also makes my eyes bigger, brighter and greener giving my ill-nickname of bright-eyes (at least I think that’s the reason - I don’t think I’ve ever contracted mixomatosis). And somehow the darker pink of dry cracked lips looks intentional rather than bloody. My hair even behaves when I’m sick - I think apathy is good for it.

This is not true of all illnesses obviously - chicken pox, german measles and anything involving facial blotching being prime examples - but in the case of nasty, coughy wheezy colds I look much better than I normally do.

This is sometimes a useful attribute - client meetings, parties etc. But when returning to the office after three days off sick it was a bit problematic. My boss looked at me and said “gosh - you look well” then paused, remembering suddenly when he’d last seen me. It was difficult, it was awkward. I could see him contemplating another sentence, possibly along the lines of “you’re fired”.

Fortunately I had my trump card handy, with a wheeze and the croakiest of small voices I said “hello” then succumbed to the hacking cough I had been suppressing all the way up the stairs. Crisis averted, the boss returned to work and I sat at my desk looking better than I have in ages but feeling so full of phlegm that I’m surprised my chair didn’t collapse.

Irony’s a bitch sometimes.

It’s March today which is good because I had got thoroughly fed up with February. It’s also sunny today which is fun because I like it when adages fail and March is supposed to “come in like a lion”. If this is a lion, then it’s a lion in a bloody good mood.

Today has many different guises. Firstly, it is (one of) the official first day(s) of spring (this has been qualified because I think there are more and they all seem fairly arbitrary) and it was formerly new year’s day before they messed with the calender and screwed all the names up. Well, not all of them I suppose, just September-December. Charity-wise (of those I know about) it’s self-injury awareness day today. 

One of the most obvious days is St David’s Day so we have pretty daffodils to look at. Pretty as they are I would prefer to be given a pile of books to celebrate world book day 2007 which is also today in the UK and Ireland.

As usual, a list has been produced of the nation’s top ten books:

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5%
1984 – George Orwell 6%
= His Dark Materials  - Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

I have at least attempted to read all of these but some have been cast aside long before the end. I love books all year round but I do somehow think World Book Day should be more of an autumn thing - I really like to think about different books when the evenings start getting dark and I want to curl up by the fire.

I will go out and celebrate world book day later by buying a handbag. This may seem a little strange but I bought six books on Monday and haven’t managed to read them all yet so I don’t want to add further to my pile of books to read. This pile is annoying large already since I have a habit of buying books on amazon that I want to read and discovering after delivery that the edition is too big for me to carry on the train. This means they sit around until I have spare time at home to read which hardly ever happens. Poor beautiful over-sized books.

Besides, my need for a new handbag directly relates to books. I keep having to sacrifice a book for something more practical like an A-Z or an umbrella. So until it stops raining and I stop getting lost or until the A-Z is a worthwhile read, I need a bigger handbag.

Happy March 1st everybody.